Accordingly, in Article 5, the draft Decree stipulates that the subjects subject to highway usage fees are vehicles traveling on highways owned by the entire people, represented by the State as the owner and directly managed and exploited.

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The Ministry of Transport is seeking opinions on a draft Decree regulating toll collection on state-invested highways. Photo: N. Huyen

5 groups of vehicles subject to highway usage fees include:

Group 1 includes vehicles with less than 12 seats, trucks with a load capacity of less than 2 tons and public passenger transport buses.

Group 2 vehicles with 12 to 30 seats and trucks with a load capacity of 2 tons to less than 4 tons.

Group 3 vehicles with 31 seats or more and trucks with a load capacity from 4 tons to less than 10 tons.

Group 4 trucks with a load capacity from 10 tons to under 18 tons and trucks carrying goods in 20-foot containers.

Group of 5 trucks with a load capacity of 18 tons or more and trucks carrying goods in 40-foot containers.

A representative of the Vietnam Road Administration said that the draft Decree regulating toll rates for expressways fully meets the regulations on conditions for implementing toll collection at level 1 (expressways with 4 lanes, with continuous emergency lanes) and level 2 (expressways with 4 lanes, without continuous emergency lanes).

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The expected toll rate per kilometer of state-invested highways is divided into two levels for each group of vehicles. Photo: N. Huyen

In addition, Article 6 of the draft Decree also stipulates that vehicles exempted from highway use fees include:

Ambulance.

Fire truck.

Specialized vehicles serving national defense include vehicles with license plates: Red background, embossed white letters and numbers, and equipped with specialized defense equipment (including: tank trucks, crane trucks, vehicles carrying armed forces on the march, understood as passenger cars with 12 seats or more, covered transport vehicles with seats installed in the trunk, control vehicles, military inspection vehicles, specialized vehicles for transporting prisoners, rescue vehicles, satellite information vehicles and other specialized cars serving national defense).

Specialized vehicles serving security include vehicles of the Ministry of Public Security , provincial, city, district and county police such as traffic police cars, 113 police cars, mobile police cars, special vehicles transporting prisoners, rescue vehicles, and emergency vehicles with identification signs according to the provisions of the law on specialized vehicles...

Specialized funeral vehicles include: Vehicles with specialized structures for funeral services (hearses, refrigerated trucks used to store and transport corpses), and related vehicles for funeral services.

The convoy was led by a traffic police car.

Regarding this content, Mr. Bui Quang Thai, Director of the Vietnam Road Administration, emphasized that the consistent view of the Ministry of Transport is that only expressways with service quality corresponding to the collection level will be subject to toll collection. The State does not collect tolls on expressways for profit. Toll collection is to provide capital for maintenance and investment in the development of new expressways.

Regarding the implementation method, Mr. Thai said that in the future, the intelligent transportation system (ITS), including the automatic non-stop toll collection system, will be invested in synchronously with the highway construction process. Therefore, on the current infrastructure, there is no need to invest in toll stations.